You have lots more energy than I do. Hi, you feeling better? You feeling good? Good. Cornrow? Braid? My foster son, Juan, just made his hair in braids. And... There's that. He wore his hair in braids. He's at Tassajara. We went to Tassajara together recently and as soon as I got there I got a tremendous sinus headache and stayed in bed for a couple of days and he was really having a... I don't know if I would say he was having a good time. What he said was he felt safe and so he wanted to stay a little bit so I thought, great, I'm out of here.

[01:01]

So I left him there and I came back. Headache gone. Favorite. On the way up I stopped at a, like a, you know, Safeway with a lot of stores, those kinds of stores, and on one of the cars, there's a bumper sticker, one of the cars, it's a great bumper sticker, it says, My other vehicle is Mahayana. That was great. I also just wanted to say it's very difficult to be who we are. And sometimes just who we are, even with our best intentions, hurts people.

[02:11]

And if we are Buddhists, if we are students of the Dharma, students of ourselves, our little selfish selves, every so often it's really good to acknowledge that. And I was myself the other night and I don't think I hurt anybody, but people were sort of, some of them were surprised, to say the least. So I just wanted to say that if I did hurt anybody or if what I did was not helpful, then I am sorry and I do apologize. And living in a community, one of the really good things about living in a community, especially in the job that I'm gifted to have, is that we're a little bit out there with each other and so we get feedback right away, which is great, because it keeps us, first of all, connected.

[03:14]

You know, the people who give you real feedback are the people who care about you. And it keeps us soft, a little humble, and that's also good. We don't get a lot of time to attach to some idea of ourselves, whether it's a great idea or not such a great idea. And I've gotten both kinds of feedback recently. So it's like when you're in the kitchen in a certain kind of way, although we do pay attention. I mean, it's really good if somebody gives you feedback that you can identify with. It's also nice for a moment, just to take a moment and feel that, because it feels good. And if you get feedback that you don't particularly want to identify with, that's really good information. It's not so much that you have to change who you are. We don't want to do that, really. We want to expose more and more who we are.

[04:17]

And the more we learn who we are and can expose more of who we are, the closer we are to who we really are. And that person really is connected with everything. And that person is a person, fundamentally, I believe, who is the person that we actually... I hope you're not following this. Because if you're trying to follow this, you're not listening to this talk in the right way. Anyway, I do believe that inside, our true nature is that we are open-hearted and feel really connected with people. So, anyway, that's my kind of warm-up. I have to warm up to give these talks. So, I'm sitting here with a book to my right that says... The title of the book is, Soul, Make a Path Through Shouting. And I'm going to actually read you that poem.

[05:23]

That is the title of that book in a minute. But it's kind of... It's a little bit hard to sit here with that title. All right, let's get started here. So, it's been a while since we've talked on a Saturday. It's been a way long while since I've talked to anybody on a Wednesday, which is a little bit more intimate situation. But this is kind of nice. A lot of people are new here this morning, I think. New people? So, a lot has changed since the last time I was here. And, of course, that is true. Because one of the fundamental teachings of Buddhism is that everything changes. And if we stop even for a moment, we get that immediately. But what we usually think of change or impermanence is maybe not exactly what Buddhism means by impermanence.

[06:27]

What we usually think of as impermanence is that there are things here and they change slowly, preferably. Actually, if we're in a good situation, we hope that they change. Actually, if we're in a good situation, we don't want them to change at all. But if they're going to change, we want them to change slowly. And if we're in a situation that we don't like very much, we think that there still are things and that it's okay with us to understand the truth of impermanence. This is what Suzuki Roshi says. It's very cute. And that's true, right? If we don't like how things are and the truth is that everything's going to change, we think, yeah, I can believe that. No problem. Let's have everything change. The sooner the better. But that's not exactly what the teaching of impermanence is, exactly quite. The teaching of impermanence, of course, is that because, or not because, or the reason, or the way that so-called apparent things can change in the first place is because there really isn't a thing there at all. Not that there's not, you know, reality.

[07:33]

I can get hurt. Not that I can't get hurt because someone hit me with this. But that it doesn't exist in the way we think it does as a solid, separate object. So one of the really big problems in our lives, in our personal lives, is that instead of really deeply investigating the truth of this teaching of change, especially and particularly the idea of me, the idea of me, and any idea that we hold, the problem is that we hold onto these views, these ideas. The idea of self, of course, is the most egregious, but we have other views as well.

[08:35]

And the holding to these views, thinking that we're right and somebody else is wrong, is a real problem. And I can't tell you the depth of how much this is a problem, except to say, maybe, that if you look at what's happening in the world today, and listen to how people talk, and see how strongly people are holding to their view of what is right and what is wrong, you can begin to see how what is happening today is, in very real part, caused by holding to our ideas of what is right, what is wrong, who we are, who somebody else is, what should be done, what shouldn't be done, what is good, what is bad, and so on and so on and so forth.

[09:37]

I've been afraid lately, actually, in a way that I don't remember ever in my whole life being afraid. And that's striking. And I've also been anguished at the news of what's been happening in the Middle East. And I noticed something about myself which was an understandable but regrettable limitation. I could very easily feel anguished about what's happening in the Middle East because I'm Jewish and I feel very connected with that area. But what I noticed was the kind of emotional response was not the same, exactly, as when I was feeling concerned and heartfelt about, for example, what's the troubles in Ireland

[10:51]

or what happened in Rwanda or what's going on now with AIDS in South Africa. So for me, this time, I am pulled psychically to this particular event. But it doesn't mean, only because of my limitation, it doesn't mean that the same kind of, if I may say, dangerously insane holding to views is not happening in other parts of the world that I, more rightly, in a more fundamental way, would feel just as connected with. So I've been trying to understand what an appropriate response should be in this situation.

[11:59]

And because I am pressed against this one, I get to examine that for all situations of this kind. What for us Buddhists is an appropriate response? When people are violent in our one-to-one relationships, in our relationships with ourselves and anyone who seems different than we are, or for nation-states, I think, this is true, you can think about it yourself, but the only time that we're violent is when we actually feel hurt or threatened or we really feel like we are justified in our position. We feel like we don't have a choice. We feel threatened. We're hurt. And I think this, it's not like a person is a bad person or a person is a violent person.

[13:08]

I don't think so. I think a person is a desperate person. I think the people in Palestine feel desperate. And I think the people in Israel feel desperate. I remember twice in my life when I understood the feeling of revenge. This is not a feeling that I grew up with. I didn't understand it. The first time it happened, actually the second time it happened, was when I was in a relationship and I didn't, I was being hurt. But it was a very kind of clever kind of hurting, so the person was really clever. And I don't want to go into the dynamics of the relationship, but anyway,

[14:13]

after we broke up, it was the first time that I actually felt like I wanted to, that I was going to hurt another people out of my anger by kind of, just because I was in this rage and out of that rage I just kind of wanted to kill them. You don't really, really, when you're like that. I grew up in a family like that. It was not just because you had a lot of energy, it didn't mean you actually wanted to kill anybody. But revenge felt different. It didn't have a lot of energy behind it. It was cool, dispassionate. I wanted to hurt somebody. It was really interesting. I really wanted to hurt somebody. It was a horrible feeling. And the other time I felt that way was when my father, my father was, I don't want to go into too much details in this either,

[15:19]

but anyway, my father at one time experienced kind of an anti-Semitism that was very demeaning to him. And he built a business with another person, and the other person in a very kind of bile-like kind of way pulled out my father's ability to remain in that business and put his car up on a garage in one of those things where you lift your car up to fix it so my dad couldn't drive home. I mean lots of things that were very surprisingly inconsiderate. And I wanted to hurt that family. I wanted to take revenge for what they had done to my dad.

[16:20]

And I believe that the people, the Palestinian people in the Middle East want and have been disrespected. And I understand that one of the people who killed themselves by bombing one of the things that turned him to do that was because he saw his father, the word is not just disrespected, but kind of something between disrespected and humiliated, something like that. And when they did that bombing in Israel at Passover,

[17:23]

which is the main Jewish holiday where you go home to your family and it's a very open and vulnerable time. I remember my mother always inviting foreign students from Israel to come to our home and share in that Passover dinner. It's a time when you bring strangers to your home and open the doors and so on, and at that time for that person to make a bombing, I think that's the thing that really threw the whole situation to a different level, I know, for the people in Israel. I read an article in the paper the other day that Israel will never, because the bombing, the suicide bombing is successful, that the leader of Hamas said that Israel will never be stable ever again. And I think that may be the case. So I don't want to talk about the situation anymore because I feel like at this point

[18:30]

to go into the history of who is right and who is wrong is not helpful. And it's not helpful when we have relationships and you end up saying, well, you did this and I did this and then you did this and then I did this. It's not helpful. We create our world with our minds when we hold to opinions, when we think we are right and another person is wrong, we create that world as a codependently arisen event. So the famous first verse from the Dhammapada, sayings of the Buddha, What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow. Our life is the creation of our mind. If a person speaks or acts with impure mind, suffering follows

[19:30]

as the wheel of the cart follows the beast that pulls it. What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow. Our life is the creation of our mind. If a person speaks or acts with a pure mind, joy will follow as a shadow follows the body. He insulted me, he hurt me, he defeated me, he robbed me. Those who think such thoughts are not free from hate. He insulted me, he hurt me, he defeated me, he robbed me. Those who think not such thoughts will be free from hate. For hate is not conquered by hate. Hate is conquered by love. This is the eternal law. Many do not know that we are here in this life to live in harmony. In Berkeley right now they're having demonstrations

[20:31]

and I'm watching, all the time I'm watching now, to hear any sanity. Is there going to be any sanity? And I'm sorry to say that Berkeley, my alma mater, is not sane today. They had demonstrations. The Palestinians, the Israeli, pro-Israeli over here and then they had another demonstration, pro-Palestinian over here. Not helpful. When I went to Berkeley, the big thing for the students at that time, we had two big things. One was the Civil Rights Movement and one was the Vietnam War. And we thought hard, long and hard, about nonviolence and what kind of response was an appropriate response.

[21:35]

We thought of all of the various aspects. Well, what about this and what about that and what if this and what if that and so on and so forth. We hadn't yet taken vows. We didn't know about vows. We were thinking. I had a boyfriend then whose concern was going to Vietnam and his response, much to my horror actually, was that he left the United States and he went to Sweden as a conscientious objector. And my response was that I went to Mississippi that summer of 1964. The people in the South were frightened when we came.

[22:57]

By we I mean, as you know, some of you know, actually probably some of you haven't a clue. And I don't want to go into it. But we were white northern students from colleges in the North, mostly, who became members of SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. And we were coming to the Deep South, Mississippi, to register voters and to teach English and to, this is what I did, and to build a community center, one room thing, and to help people decide whether at the end of the summer they were going to let their little five-year-old kids, unprotected,

[24:04]

walk to school. Now I'll read you this poem. It's called, Soul Make a Path Through Shouting. First, before I read this poem, could you guys close your eyes and put your hands like this on your head? Thank you for doing this. I ask you to do this every so often. Really close your eyes. Close your eyes. Now, there's a word in here that might offend some people, okay? So I don't want you to know how you're going to vote, but I want you to actually vote. And if there's anybody in the room who will be offended by this word,

[25:06]

I won't read it, but it's N-I-G-G-E-R, that word. Will anybody be offended by that word? Raise your hand. Okay. I won't say it. Okay. Thick at the school gate are the ones Rage has twisted into minotaurs Harpies relentlessly swift So you must walk past the pincers The swaying horns Sister, sister Straight through the guts of fear and fury Straight through Where are you going? I'm just going to school. Here we go to meet the hydra-headed day Here we go to meet the maelstrom Can my voice be an angel on the spot

[26:08]

An amen corner Can my voice take you there Gallant girl with a notebook Up, up from the shadows of gallows' trees To the other shore A globe bathed in light A chalkboard blooming with equations I have never seen the likes of you Pioneer in dark glasses You won't show the mob your eyes But I know your gaze Steady on the north star burning With their jerry-rigged faith Their spear of the American flag How could they dare to believe You're someone sacred Burr-headed girl Where are you going? I'm just going to school. You know, I don't think I need to...

[27:34]

I think you understand. Yun Men, there's a koan, case number 14 in the Blue Cliff Record. Yun Men, in the Blue Cliff Record. In Japanese, it's called Un Man. His teacher was Seppo. This is, you know, Blanche's favorite two people, Seppo and Ganto. This is the koan. A monk asked Yun Men, What is the teaching of the Buddha's lifetime? Yun Men said, an appropriate response. Another translation, in the Hekigan Roku, I think, it says, What are the teachings of a whole lifetime? And the response is, preaching facing oneness.

[28:36]

So, if we understand our connectedness, yes, you know, there are differences, but the fundamental truth of our existence is that we are the same fundamental essence. If we only live in a place of differences, without understanding our fundamental connectedness, we end up holding to views, afraid, threatened, and we end up hurting each other. You know, Thich Nhat Hanh has this great poem, and in a way, I'm kind of sorry to read it to you again, because I'm sure you've heard it dozens and dozens of times, but the last time I heard it, I heard something different in it, and I really appreciated it again, so I want to read it to you. The history of this, it's really interesting.

[29:41]

He was one of the delegates to a, I think, to a nation's special session, United Nations special session on disarmament in 1982. There were lots of religious leaders there, and they were all talking about probably the precepts, and, you know, things that religious people talk about. And Thich Nhat Hanh didn't have anything, he didn't have a written speech, he didn't have a speech made. On the way to the time that he was going to talk at this conference, he wrote this poem. He stood up, he read this poem, he sat down. Okay. It's called, Please Call Me By My True Names. Don't say that I will depart tomorrow. Even today I am still arriving. Look deeply. Every second I'm arriving to be a bud on a spring branch, to be a tiny bird with still fragile wings, learning to sing in my new nest,

[30:44]

to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower, to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone. I still arrive in order to laugh and to cry, to fear and to hope. The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that is alive. I am a mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of a river, and I am the bird that swoops down to swallow the mayfly. I am a frog swimming happily in the clear water of a pond, and I am the grass snake that silently feeds itself on that frog. I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones, my legs as thin as bamboo sticks, and I am the arms merchant selling deadly weapons to Uganda. I am the 12-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat, who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate, and I am that pirate, my heart not yet capable

[31:45]

of seeing and loving. And I am the bomber, and I am the soldier, and I am the grieving family with a closed heart, not yet capable of listening. My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom all over the earth. My pain is like a river of tears, so vast it fills the four oceans. Please, call me by my true names, so I can hear all my cries and laughter at once, so I can see that my joy and pain are one. Please, call me by my true names, so I can wake up and the door of my heart can be left open. Someday, maybe,

[32:58]

I'd like to actually kind of tell you of the heroism of some of the people in Mississippi the people you don't hear of, the people whose names are not recorded or mentioned very often, the little kids, the teenager who sat on the community center when even it wasn't really even built yet, he was just sitting on timbers with a rifle in his lap. And we were taught in Tougaloo, just outside of Jackson, nonviolence. So what is an appropriate response? It just, I can hardly understand the Dalai Lama consistency when his people are being decimated

[34:00]

in the most heartless way and, and his culture and he's still nonviolent. I think the only way must be to understand the depth of our relatedness. So again, as Buddhists, what is our appropriate response? The nature of our mind is that it discriminates. That is not the problem. The problem is, is that we believe those discriminations. We make them solid and we identify with them. It is through sitting meditation, as I say over and over and over again,

[35:02]

it is through sitting meditation that we begin to learn the deeper truth, the essence of who we are. As people, as disciples of Buddha, in whatever way your life turns out to shape itself, whether you end up being monks or priests or lay people, it doesn't matter. If your commitment is to the Buddha path, to the Buddha way, and I think essentially all religions essentially would teach the same thing. But certainly, if you're a disciple of the Buddha, we must not take sides. We must not take sides. I don't think we're allowed

[36:08]

to spend time justifying our point of view. I don't think so. I don't think that we are allowed to hold on to ill-will. We're not. It's one of the precepts. It is our responsibility, I believe, in this world to always return to zero, to always return to centered, to always return to now. As Buddhists,

[37:12]

we renounce. Our path is about renouncing self-centeredness, coming always from territoriality, coming from a place of my view. I think we are hidden revolutionaries in this world. We are not to be caught by greed, hate, and delusion. We are living to undermine that way, that worldly way of seeing things. We must not take sides. We must not take sides.

[38:20]

And of course, we will get caught, and we do make mistakes. And this is good because then we won't so much hold to the idea of our own, you know, right view, or whatever it is. We have to be naked in the world and just do our best. But at least we have some clarity with where we are aiming at. And then we have to make an appropriate response. So in Mississippi, at the end of the summer, the parents had to decide. And the last night before school, they sat up. I was in, it was in Harmony, Mississippi, just outside of Carthage.

[39:22]

And the school was in Carthage. We hadn't yet finished the community center, so there wasn't a roof. It was at night. It was very dark. And there was just one uncovered bulb in the middle of the room. It was probably half the size of this room. And the parents were sitting around the edge. And there were three of us, white people, we didn't say anything. The young man, the teenager, who every night while we were building the community center was sitting

[40:25]

on top of it with a rifle, stood up. And he started to speak. He wasn't wearing a shirt. It was black. It was hot. And he said something like, I don't know how to read. I want my young brother to be able to read. When will it start? For Medgar Evers,

[41:29]

and for all the people who came before, please send these kids to school. And when he left, the parents continued to talk till two o'clock in the morning. This was not a theoretical event they were talking about. They were talking about their own kids. We left, the three of us, the next day, to go to the Democratic Convention in Atlanta to see if the Democratic Party, the great Democratic Party, would seat the Mississippi Freedom Delegation. They didn't. But I heard

[42:34]

that the kids did go to school. It's not easy when everybody is taking sides to stand in the middle. So each of us need to figure out what is our own appropriate response.

[43:12]

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